fallout from a restless mind

#showertune: ‘fill my cup’ by gomez

I’d love to love lateautumn.

there are lots of things i do love about it: wood-burning smells and crunchy leaves, the striking russets and earthy browns, the nip in the air that keeps your nose honest and the chance to crack out the warm, woollen, wardrobe that’s sat sulking since spring. hurray for alliteration – the most primary-school of all the poetic devices.

the problem is that it has become traditional that when it arrives i awake each morning with the sure and certain sense that my goal, my proper natural purpose, is to hibernate. as you all know, i struggle a lot with sleep and tiredness as a result of my depression, and this is the worst time of year by far. dark 7:30, my waking time of preference, has been snooze-buttoned and ignored for many days in a row now. even 8:00 says “look, it’s so dingy, it must be dusk. given that you’re tired and already in bed, why not get some sleep?” i guess i have what they call SAD – seasonal affective disorder – or something similar anyway. it certainly seems to arrive each year at around the same time, like some kind of loathed relative.

this is the sixth year in a row i’ve felt this way. i hate it. if i wake up and get up, i feel tired, sluggish and like i’ve ignored what my body has clearly recommended. if i sleep in, i feel tired, sluggish, guilty and useless, and the day is too short to do much. i know you lot have been getting short changed of late, i’ve just not had many ideas or much get-up-and-blog about me. sorry for that. i will try harder. i think i might get one of those lights that wakes you up (it has to be worth a punt, right?).

the iOS app Sleep Cycle and of course my daily #showertune are still functioning as an important aspects of my cope-kit, but at the moment it’s not so much the amount of sleep i get, as it is the need to interrupt that sleep for a period called ‘the day’, and getting to the shower is therefore proving tricky. sounds pathetic doesn’t it? probably it is, but it’s where i’m at right now. hopefully it will pass. most years it gets a little better after Christmas, even if that’s when it gets coldest.

anyway, sorry to be fairly Eeyore about the world. here’s Fill My Cup by Gomez (who everyone loved for a day and a half in the late 90s, and then hated).

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of the easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

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this is ...

a place designed to house thought excesses. if my mind is archimedes' bath, the water my general thoughts and archimedes himself the kind of clever thoughts i'm supposed to put in my work, then what you will find here is what escapes over the brim as the skinny boffin lowers himself into the tub. it exists, further indulging the analogy, on the basis that it might be necessary to collect and measure the runoff in order to know the volume of the person.